Nancey Murphy, Ph.D., Th.D.Nobel Conference 47

Professor of Christian Philosophy, School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

The Rev. Dr. Nancey Claire Murphy’s research interests focus on the role of modern and postmodern philosophy in shaping Christian theology; on relations between theology and science; and more recently on the philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

Murphy took her undergraduate degree from Creighton University, Omaha, Neb. (B.A. in psychology and philosophy, 1973), and then went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science in 1980 and a Th.D. in theology and the philosophy of religion from the Graduate Theological Union in 1987. In 1989 she accepted a faculty position at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., where she is now a full professor of Christian philosophy. Since 2003 she has also served as an adjunct professor and now research professor at the International Baptist Theological Seminary of Prague, Czech Republic. She is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren.

Murphy is the author of eight books. Her first, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Cornell, 1990), won the American Academy of Religion award for excellence. On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (with G.F.R. Ellis, Fortress, 1996) was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Her most recent books are Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge, 2006) and Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (with Warren Brown, Oxford, 2007). She has also co-edited 12 volumes, including Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will (with G.F.R. Ellis and T. O’Connor, Springer, 2009).